Read a Preview of Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling



Hello dear Readers! Jaym Gates and I are hard at work wrapping up the cover design, initial Table of Contents, and the submission guidelines for our upcoming anthology titled Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling for Apex Book Company. We’ll be launching a Kickstarter for this anthology, and I’ll be sharing more details about that soon.

Today, I wanted to share with you a preview of what this anthology is all about. Maurice Broaddus has written a story titled “Super Duper Fly” which appears in the October 2015 issue of Apex Magazine. Follow the link and you can read it on the company website!

In his own words, Maurice talks about the trope he wanted to tackle and why.

THE MAGICAL NEGRO—It’s easy to believe that this trope came from a good place or at least rose out of benign neglect. After all, a white writer is “writing what they know” or appealing to their target demographic, which is typically people like them, but they want a more diverse world. So the easy solution is to put an “other” at a critical place in their hero’s journey to help them along. The Magical Negro is one such other (see also: Magical Native American, Magical Asian, etc). One sees The Magical Negro in such movies as Ghost, The Legend of Bagger Vance, The Family Man, and Bruce Almighty. Or in an unusual amount of Stephen King novels/movie adaptations such as The Stand, The Talisman (written with Peter Straub), The Shining, and the ultimate ode to The Magical Negro, The Green Mile.- Maurice Broaddus

In the upcoming Upside Down, you will find tropes and clichés that writers chose to tackle and examine through the lends of their stories. These range from race-based tropes like the Magical Negro to others grounded in genre, like the City Planet. Our submission guidelines, which will be posted shortly, will include a wish list of the types of tropes and clichés we’d like to see. This will help us ensure we’ve got a good mix of stories that’ll cover a broad range of tropes for the reader.

Hope you’re as excited about this collection as I am!

Announcing Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling

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Apex Publications is pleased to announce the addition of a new anthology to its 2015 release schedule. Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling is an anthology of short stories and poems that will highlight the long-standing tradition of writers who identify tropes in science fiction, fantasy, and horror and twist them into something new and interesting.

Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling will include original contributions from Maurice Broaddus, Shanna Germain, Laura Anne Gilman, Sara Harvey, John Hornor Jacobs, Rahul Kanakia, Haralambi Markov, Sunil Patel, Kat Richardson, Nisi Shawl, Lucien Soulban, Wrath James White, Alyssa Wong, and many others.

“I am excited to be working with two fantastic, smart, and gifted editors like Jaym Gates and Monica Valentinelli,” says Jason Sizemore, the publisher of Apex Book Company. “They should only enhance the Apex reputation as one of the genre’s leading anthology publishers with the release of Upside Down.”

Edited by Jaym Gates (War Stories) and Monica Valentinelli (Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horrors), the anthology will debut in Fall/Winter 2015 in both digital and print. The anthology will be Gates’s second collection with Apex Book Company and Valentinelli’s first. A Kickstarter and open submissions period are also planned for this fall.

To find out more about Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling, be sure to watch for milestone-related updates from the editors posted on the Apex Book Company website.

Editor’s Afterword from Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror

Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly HororThis year, we’re celebrating the one-year anniversary of Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror. The anthology won a reader’s choice award and has earned a spot on many reader’s shelves of ghostly favorites. I was lucky to edit the anthology. I say “lucky,” because I worked with a group of very fine writers, indeed.

To celebrate, I am publishing the Editor’s Afterword here on my blog. I feel that, when I’m editing an anthology, I prefer the emphasis to be on the authors themselves. After all, they do a tremendous amount of heavy lifting and I’m more like a treasure hunter, helping them show their best faces. (And that, in my opinion, they did.)

If you’re interested in picking up this spooky collection, you can head on over to BarnesandNoble.com and DriveThruFiction.com.

Editor’s Afterword

Reading an anthology about ghost hunters is like meandering into a haunted mansion. As you wander through hallways covered in cobwebs, a chill goes up and down your spine when you visit each room. Something — whether it’s a ghostly flicker or a strange shadow — catches your eye. The temperature plummets. Then, the room spins and your heart is pounding. It’s strange, but after a few minutes, everything returns to normal. As your vision clears, you catch a few, grim details. Maybe you shudder as ghostly orb floats past you. Maybe you trip over a dead body.

Or maybe you’ve stepped in a pool of blood.

You open your mouth to scream when suddenly — out of nowhere — a team of ghost hunters rushes in around you. They tell you they’ve got it covered; they know what they’re doing.

And, if you’re willing, they’ll be glad to take you along for eleven, different rides.


For HAUNTED, eleven authors were asked to tap into their storytelling abilities and write a story about ghost hunting. My role began when I received their submissions and ended when I accepted their final version for the anthology. The end result of the writing and editing process is the spooky collection of stories you’ve just read.

The talented authors in this anthology are nothing short of amazing. They were all easy to work with and excited about penning and revising their ghostly tales. Each one sends a chill up-and-down my spine, not just because they haunt my laptop, but because I’ve had the unique pleasure of seeing these stories through from beginning to end.

I hope you enjoyed reading HAUNTED: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror and I encourage you to explore the depth and breadth of works by these exceptional wordsmiths.


Happy Hunting!

Atlas Revealed in New Hero anthology

The cover was just revealed for the New Hero anthology from Stone Skin Press. My vampire detective Atlas makes a stunning debut on the cover art by famed artist Gene Ha.

Atlas is the fifth hero in the second row, right above the “W.” Yes, he is wearing motorcycle gear. Hee. I had so much fun with this particular vampire and the setting I built. Can’t wait to write another one!

New Hero anthology

Let Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror Scare You in eBook Formats!

Haunted CoverHAUNTED: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror is now available in eBook format on DriveThruHorror.com for your Kindle, Nook and more! Just in time for All Hallow’s Eve; I hope you’ll do me the honor of downloading this collection of ghostly mysteries.

The first review has been posted and here’s what the reviewer had to say about my role:

The attention and careful thought that editor Monica Valentinelli put into arranging the stories in “Haunted” pays off as it the only anthology I have ever been able to read (and enjoy) in a single sitting. — Review of HAUNTED on DriveThruHorror.com

Download Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror

Who willingly walks into a haunted house?

Ghost hunters explore dark places, investigate clues and uncover secrets of the dead. Evidence of an afterlife may prove elusive and few hunters recognize some things are best left buried and forgotten.

Suspense and intrigue lurks inside HAUNTED: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror. Unlock the clues in these eleven mysteries:

+ A curious ghost hunter tracks down a mysterious device’s origin and finds more than he bargained for.

+ One local tour guide meets a group of cocky professionals in a small town and discovers something more frightening than ghosts.

+ After his famous ghost hunting wife is declared missing, a devastated husband follows a trail of clues to find her.

+ A team of researchers at a local university are in over their heads when they try to prove a house is haunted.

+ When a desperate mother offers his services, a boy who can talk to ghosts is dragged into a dangerous mystery.

+ Lost without their go-to guy, a group of ghost hunters fight each other to get him back on curious terms.

+ Tragedy looms when a group of friends enter a suspicious house and realize they’re unequipped to hurt what’s already dead.

+ A skeptic and a believer team up to expose the truth about a local legend in a haunted forest.

+ An iconic figure confronts a man to find out if he’s building haunted houses or if it’s a bizarre hoax.

+ Strange circumstances compel the ghosts from a troubled veteran’s past to reappear in the present.

+ A friendly warning turns into a bizarre rescue when a ghost hunter tries to help an amateur armed with an odd locket.

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